Thursday, 11 March 2010

One day in May 1997 I woke up with an idea for a new type of mobile phone, that had no conventional buttons, but it would be controlled by invisible sensors, i.e. accelerometers, screen touch sensors , face tracking devices. I approached Peter Cochrane, Head of BT Labs, Martlesham to see if they were interested in it and could they fund me to prototype it. They did and we patented in 1997. Patent also covered hand writing recording, cameras, GPS tagging and cloud computing. Microsoft liked this new type of phone and gave me position as a Reseacher at Microsoft Research Cambridge 1998-2007. Microsoft were offered this patent but didn't buy it.

Eventually, 11 years later this phone Patent sold to Apple in 2008 as covers technology used in the iPhone, here is some of the story

I left Microsoft in 2007 and founded Girton Labs Ltd, Cambridge. Now in 2010 we are inventing and building prototypes for mobile phone technology for the next 5-10 years. There is so much competition now with phones, a brand new type of novel hardware needs inventing to differential the rest from the Apple iPhone.
One thrilling new sensor design for mobile phones I can't talk about yet as confidential for phone company. But here is one I can. Here is a video of our new hand tracker. We have prototyped a proof of concept model:

The video shows a hand being tracked with a 4x4 heat
array, of possible use to mobile phones and tablet pcs.
A Digital signal Processor decodes, left/right up/down hand movement .
Applications for this new User Input include web page navigation, hand
gesture control and power on/off for mobile phones and tablet computers.
Other applications include sterile medical controls and controlling simple
instruments in cars like GPS. It works with gloves unlike some hand trackers or touch screens.
The technology also includes these feature being done by a phone's built in camera
but the advantage over using ordinary built in camera to track hands, is very low
processor overhead, (uses 4Mhz micrcocontroller for Digital Signal
Processing in prototype) very low power and can work in low light
levels.
Cost of sensor approx $5 in large quantities, Intellectual Property
owned entirely by Girton Labs Ltd, Cambridge.
Please contact Lyndsay Williams, sensecam@gmail.com for more information.
www.girtonlabs.com